Banana River Chronicle
by selkie
Summary: Highlander/X-Men crossover, sequel to Castaways and Other Strangers. Methos and the X-Men cross paths again.
1. Default Chapter

Ever have one of those stories that just kind of sits in your brain for a year, then finally ends up getting written? This one's been stuck between the ears since well before X2, but there's just been something in the synapses nagging me to actually write the darn thing out. The story also got its start before the loss of Columbia.   
  
Husband, McCool, Anderson, Brown, Chawla, Clark, and Ramon- ".. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."   
  
Banana River Chronicle  
  
Central Florida  
  
The man once called Methos and currently known as Adam Towson sat at the edge of the pool, legs dangling down into the cool water. Taking a sip of his beer, he looked across pool and lawn down to the small lake, eyes taking in the handful of boats skimming across the water in the twilight. If Duncan was here, he would likely accuse him of hiding from the world's problems. Adam preferred to think of it as waiting until some event or group became big enough to be worthy of his attention again. Until then, Paris was simply getting too cold in the winter for old bones, so he had gone some place a bit warmer.  
  
As he watched the boaters float past, he listened as a handful of cars drive down the street in front of his house. Finally, one of them pulled into his driveway. Adam quickly got out of the pool, dried his legs, and made his way through the house. Just as he opened the door, he saw his guest walking slowly up the walk.  
  
"Joe, it's good to see you." He smiled at the other man. "How was the trip down?"  
  
"Way too long." The two made their way into the house, and Adam herded him toward the kitchen. "The new so-called security measures at the airport seem to only manage to make people even more antsy. But I'm here. Don't suppose you've got something decent to drink?" Joe took a seat at the kitchen table.  
  
"There's package store in town that does beers of the world beyond the usual Red Stripe, Corona, Guinness brands. Does a nice Dortmunder Pilsner sound good?"  
  
"Works for me." Adam retrieved two beers from the fridge and took a chair next to his friend.  
  
"Here's to the wonders of the modern transportation grid. Sometimes I'll go through the grocery store, and be struck by how rich a country this is because the middle class can buy grapes from Chile, figs from Greece, and capsicums from the Netherlands without giving it a second thought."  
  
"Not to mention a hundred different kinds of electronics stamped Made in Taiwan." Joe looked around at the professional-looking kitchen. "You've got a nice house here Adam, but not quite what I'd expect from you. It's a big jump from Paris to here."  
  
"It's one of those cases where every step makes sense even if the big picture seems a bit muddled. I wanted away from Europe, warm, and politically stable, so that narrowed down the field quite a bit. So I looked at Florida, and decided that there would be too many other immortals passing through Miami. Orlando's big enough to have all the necessary creature comforts, and the odd immortal who decides he just has to go to Disney World isn't going to go north of town and find me in Winter Park.  
  
As for the house, it is a bit more than what a high school teacher is supposed to be able to afford, but I've made noises that I bought a house low in San Francisco and sold it high. Same thing the Wisczniewskis or the Porters down the street did when they moved down here from New Jersey. And since everyone here grew up some place else, being a new person in town doesn't attract much interest or gossip."  
  
"And a neighbor in the space program."  
  
"Neighbor who formerly worked for NASA as a high level mucky-muck who can still score launch tickets for his friends after he's officially retired. And when there is a chance to see something genuinely new for me, I'll definitely take the opportunity."  
  
"And I appreciate you getting a ticket for me too."  
  
"Should have had you bring a date. Scotty ended up giving me three tickets."  
  
Before either man could say more, the doorbell rang.   
  
"I'm not expecting company. Probably the Girl Scouts selling cookies again."  
  
"Well get me a box of those Thin Mints then." Joe took another swig of his beer as Adam walked over to the door.  
  
There was a young woman on his doorstep. Maybe five and a half feet tall, slightly overweight and with glasses and dirty blond hair. She wore jeans and a blue t-shirt that could have come from a store anywhere in America, and had a small wheeled suitcase to one side.  
  
"Duncan MacLeod sent me." Adam saw a yellow cab behind her leave his driveway. "He said you would help me." From her accent, he guessed that Hungarian, not English was her primary language.  
  
"Maybe." Behind him, Adam heard Joe shuffling through the kitchen. He wished he'd had time to show Joe where the firearms were in case the girl was setting them up for a trap. "Come in, and let me get your suitcase. Have a seat in the living room to the right." Her clothes were not bulky enough that she could be hiding much under them. If she had something dangerous, it would likely be in the case.  
  
"Thank you." He felt her hand shaking when he bumped into it as she took her hand off the handle. They made their way to the living room, where she nearly collapsed onto the couch. It seemed like she had used the last of her energy to make it to Adam's front door.  
  
"Are you okay?"  
  
"I did not sleep much lately. No food since the first part of the plane either." Joe picked that moment to materialize next to her with a glass of orange juice.  
  
"Made my living knowing what people need. She needs some food in her, and then some sleep."  
  
"And I need to know why Duncan sent her here."  
  
"My name is Lidia Vadas. I am a university student in Hungary. I am spending this term working for Fidesz in the Parliament, so I have experience when I look for a job after I graduate. I am a little mutant. I can't make fire with my thoughts, or fly. But I can read minds sometimes if I'm touching someone or sometimes if we're just very close.  
  
So I am running through the Parliament halls because I'm late to a meeting about farms. I don't look where I'm going, and I run into a man. We trip, and our arms touch. I see a little bit of what he thinks, and he is thinking that there are bombs that are going to go off. So I get away from him, and I call the police. Tell them I heard there are bombs, but not how I learned about it. I don't give my name."  
  
"And everyone is evacuated in time and the bombs are disarmed." Adam had seen coverage of it on BBC World News.  
  
"Yes. No one dies. I think everything is good. I go home to the apartment I am renting and there are two men there waiting for me. I ask if they are cops, and they say yes, but I can tell they lie. One tries to grab me, and drag me away. So I scream I am being raped. The people who live next door, Olivia and Istvan, they come running. There is a fight, and the two strangers are knocked down." From context, he assumed Olivia and Istvan were the married immortals he knew with those names. Do-Gooders almost up to MacLeod's level.  
  
"So Olivia takes me back to her apartment, and she tells me that she recognizes one of the men, and that Hungary is not safe for me any more. I trust what she says because I have shaken her hand. She, there is something strange, but she is honest. I do not know where Istvan goes, but Olivia gets me a passport with a different name, and a plane ticket to Seacouver. She gives me the address of Duncan MacLeod, and says I can stay there until it is safe to come back."  
  
"I go to Seacouver. Mr.MacLeod, he is like Olivia, like you too. There is strangeness when I shake his hand, but I know he will try to help me. So I stay there for a few days, and he keeps trying to call Olivia and Istvan to see if I can go home. But he cannot reach them. He says he needs to go to Budapest to find them, and that I should go to see you because he says you can keep anything you want from being found." Adam mentally sighed, hoping that this didn't mean MacLeod meant to drag him back into the hero business permanently.  
  
"I owe him a few favors, and I've still got a few empty guest rooms, so my house is yours until you can go home again." He wrangled Lidia a sandwich and a second glass or juice, then sent the obviously exhausted girl to bed.  
  
"Bit more excitement than what you planned?"  
  
"Unfortunately. Can I ask you the favor of checking what she said with what the Watchers have seen?"  
  
"I've still got a few contacts there who will see just how she's been interacting with Duncan and the Nagys. If it seems like she's telling the truth, then what?"  
  
"Then I've got an extra ticket for the VIP section to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis launch tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Might as well have our guest come along as well."  
  
******************************  
  
Jean Grey was ready to go back to her hotel room, or back to Westchester, or to the North Pole, or even to the dreaded Kingdom of Mouse. She was ready to pretty much be anywhere but on the edge of a Florida swamp during high summer circulating among a crowd that at best politely tolerated her presence, and at worst thought she was an abomination for daring to be born. But she had become a sort of spokesman for mutants in America in recent years along with the Professor, and a man named Alan Kinghurst was about to become the first known mutant in space so she continued her polite circulation through the crowd of VIPs assembled at the best viewing site for the Space Shuttle launch. She wanted to sigh, but maintained a vacant smile as Professor Xavier waved her over to meet someone. At least she could fantasize about which of her fellow Very Importants she could feed to the swamp gators as the sweat beaded down her face.   
  
The Professor nodded toward the swamp with humor in his eyes. The jokes spread quickly among telepaths.   
  
"Jean, I think I've found someone you really would like to talk with. This is Scott MacInnis." A gray-haired man standing next to the Professor leaned forward to shake her hand. "He came here as an electrical engineer back during the Mercury days, and has been here ever since."  
  
"You can call me Scotty, miss. And I'm retired these days. Just come back here to volunteer doing some historical records projects. I figure someone's got to make sure that all the good stories aren't forgotten. The Missus MacInnis says I need to do something to keep me from getting into trouble."  
  
"The good stories?"  
  
"Yeah. Back in the day, the government had the whole script about how this place would be shown and seen in Peoria, but it's not fair to all the people who worked here if you don't try to record the whole story, warts and all. For instance, there was the one involving Gus Grissom, a nine iron, a couple of alligators that lived in the big pond over by 25A…." Jean let herself get swept up in a series of tales of the people behind the space program.  
  
"…And that was that, no matter what the General thought about the matter. Hey Adam, over here!" Scotty waved to someone standing behind Jean.   
  
"Here's your tea, Scotty." A shockingly familiar voice replied as he passed the engineer a plastic cup. Adam Pierson. The last time she had seen him, he had been talking about distancing himself from the Friends of Humanity. Now he had reappeared at an event that was supposed to mark progress for Mutant Americans.   
  
"Hello, I'm Adam Towson." He introduced himself to the Professor and Jean before she could say anything.   
  
"Adam's my next door neighbor. Teaches French over at the high school. These are his friends Joe, and I didn't catch your name, little lady." Scotty seemed to swoop a man and a young woman into their circle of people.  
  
"Lidia. I'm here visiting my Uncle Joe." The girl seemed a bit more nervous than Jean might expect and the accent didn't seem quite right.   
  
"Pleased to meet you all." Jean said, shaking hands. *Charles, this Adam could be trouble*, she quickly thought to the Professor. "I don't suppose you could point me to where the tea came from? I could use a cool drink."   
  
"Sure. We've got" Adam glanced over Jean's shoulder to the giant countdown clock perched at the edge of the swamp overlooking the launch site "thirteen minutes until the launch. The drinks line shouldn't take that long to go through. I'll leave Lidia in the care of Scotty and the Professor here." He quickly turned toward the small space museum that was serving as the bar and restroom facility for the VIPs for the day. Jean had to dodge through the crowd in pursuit.  
  
"So just what are you doing here Adam?"   
  
"Just what everyone else here is doing: watching the American space program in action. Not too often I get to see something I've never seen before, so when Scotty offered the tickets, I jumped on the offer. I really am just a tourist today."  
  
"And Alan Kinghurst?"  
  
"Isn't he the bloke playing goalie for Aston Villa this year?" They ducked into the air conditioned speldor of the museum and Adam headed to the drinks table. "Lemonade, sweet or unsweetened tea?"   
  
"I'll take lemonade." Cups were retrieved, and all too soon they were heading back out of the museum.   
  
"So just what is your angle here, Pierson?"   
  
"Don't know who this Pierson fellow is, but for me, I'm trying to stay out of the game these days. And I certainly wouldn't try anything here. Word gets back, and I can kiss my still in probationary period teaching job good bye." They arrived back at their group, and Jean was introduced to Adam's friend Joe while in turn introducing the Florida people to Scott Summers.  
  
"Miss you didn't go with the tea?" Scotty asked. "You were saying that you were warm, and Miss Natalie's tea is just about guaranteed to keep you nice and cool."   
  
"T-minus nine minutes." an invisible voice calmly went out over the loudspeakers and the crowd started to move from museum to the bleachers. "We will now have a ten minute hold before resuming countdown."  
  
"The hold's routine. Right now launch control's going through the last minute checks, making sure air space is really clear, and giving the rosary beads one more rub." Scotty said. "Be right back. I've got to say hi to General Mazur over there."  
  
"Shall we?" Scott said and Xavier's group started to move towards their spot in front of the bleachers. And then everything stopped being routine.  
  
********************  
  
"We are holding. We have unauthorized aircraft in the launch zone. We are holding." All the low buzz conversation stopped, and the crowd looked across the canal towards the shuttle.   
  
And the three Blackhawk helicopters skimming just above the water, faces of some sorts of commandos in the aircraft doorways visible from the ground. Adam looked around for Scotty, and when he didn't see the other man, mentally wished him the best. An instant later, he grabbed Joe and Lidia by the arms. "We run. Bleacher line, then use the trees there for cover. Then to the car."   
  
For some reason, the rest of the crowd sat in the bleachers, almost hypnotized by the appearance of the helicopters. The three bolted, Adam and Lidia supporting Joe the best they could. Then just as they reached the tree line, the crowd started to stampede away. Then the commandos started firing over the heads of the crowd  
  
"Stop. You will stay where you are." A voice said from the helicopter.  
  
"Don't look back." Adam ordered Lidia. He heard some of the crowd stop on the spot, while others kept running. Fortunately, he didn't hear anyone getting hit by the bullets.  
  
"We do not want to hurt you. We will not allow a mutant to go into space. Scrub the launch, and no one will be unharmed." Adam made it to the parking lot and started angling towards his Taurus. As he looked around, he noticed with relief a few other people had also gotten enough ahead of the Black Hats to get to their vehicles. They quickly arranged themselves into the car. clicked seatbelts on, and Adam floored the gas pedal as he left the lot. Last thing he wanted to do was get caught up in a traffic jam within a quarter mile of some sort of VIP hostage situation. He threaded the car back through the almost empty Space Center roadways only slowing when he reached the gate back to the civilian world.   
  
"We're in a lockdown, sir. No one goes in or out right now because of the mess down at the museum." The barely twenty gate guard stood in front of the now barricaded gate, one hand resting on his gun.   
  
"And we just want to get as far away as possible." Adam said.   
  
"I can understand that, sir. But I've got to make sure you're not one of the bad guys, and hope you can understand that."   
  
"We do." Joe said.  
  
"But we really need to get away from there?" Lidia said. Adam thought he knew what she meant by that.  
  
"Yes, we really need to get out of here." He said.  
  
"Okay." He looked in the rear view mirror to Lidia's perch in the back seat. " Theese are not the ones you are looking for. Move along." She told the guard softly. "Theese are not the ones you are looking for."  
  
"Theese are not the ones we are looking for." The guard repeated, a slightly glazed expression on his face.  
  
"Move along."  
  
"Move along."   
  
"If you say so." Adam hit the gas pedal as the guard lifted the barricade and waved him through. In the back seat, Lidia started up a mad giggle.   
  
"It worked. I think it only works for Luke Skywalker, but it worked this time."   
  
"You did something with your mind and made the guard let us through." Joe said.  
  
"I did not made. I'm not strong enough to make someone do something they don't want to do. But sometimes, I can ask really hard with my mind, and people who, they don't have a strong feeling about something, I suggest and they do. Him, he was worried about what was happening at the launch site and not so much about his posting. So if he lets us go, he can just worry about launch site, and not about us."  
  
"I think I followed that." Joe said. "You knew what she could do?"  
  
"I've seen her type of mutant before, and knew she could do it. I didn't know if she knew she could do it."   
  
"You have met my type before?" Lidia said.   
  
"On a couple of occasions. And I remember that that sort of thing usually left them with a hell of a headache. Joe, there's industrial power ibuprofen in the glove box."   
  
"You were right about the pain. I think I will have the headache tablet now." Lidia said, her breath getting a bit raspy. He had been right about the headache. "but I must tell you something. I know who those people on the helicopters were."  
  
"Friends of Humanity. I think I recognized a face or two from the wanted posters."   
  
"No, no I saw the faces, and I felt them a bit too before the guns started. They were the ones that tried to bomb Parliament back home. I think one of them saw me and knows who I am back."  
  
"So they've seen you and they've got a score to settle with you. So before we do anything else, let's get as far away from them as possible." Adam drove through a quiet Titusville, glad that the locals were still excited enough about the launches to be hunkered down at their favorite viewing spots and leaving him with nearly deserted roads. Joe fumbled for and found a talk radio station covering the launch turned hostage situation. He leaned back in his seat, checked the rear view mirror, and frowned.  
  
"I think we're being followed."  
  
"Which one?" Adam said.   
  
"The white Grand Prix. He picked us up just after we got off the causeway."  
  
"Damn." Adam made a series of quick turns through residential neighborhoods. The other car followed. "Check the storage box under the seat, Joseph. Lidia, keep the seatbelt on, but lay sideways across the seat back there." Joe reached down, pulled the box out, and opened it. Inside was a Beretta Tomcat.  
  
"Extra clips in there too if needed."  
  
"You brought a gun into the Space Center?" Joe said as he checked over the handgun.  
  
"Adam Towson has a concealed carry permit. And if it did turn up in a search at the gates, claiming I forgot to leave it home before coming out there is actually a valid argument in this state. They'd just pull the visitor's pass and not let me inside." The Grand Prix inched closer, no longer trying to hide its efforts.   
  
"Any off chance they're law enforcement that saw us get past the gate?" Adam said.  
  
"If they were, they would have had sirens by now. " Adam turned away from the street of neatly kept cinder block houses, finding himself back on a four lane commercial road. The white car followed, pulling into the right lane next to his Taurus. He caught a glimpse of metal moving and started to brake.  
  
"Gun." Joe yelled, confirming what he thought he saw. Someone in the other car fired. If he had not changed speed, the bullet would have hit the men. Instead, it went just in front of them, shattering window glass across their laps. Joe flattened himself against the seat, and brought his own gun up, returning fire. He heard a scream from the other car, and it suddenly veered away from them, crashing ino a Wendy's parking lot. Apparently, Joe's aim had been better.   
  
"Stay down Lidia. We need to make sure there aren't more of them." Another series of turns with no apparent pursuit followed. Adam then decided that the coast was likely lear enough for him to get on the easily controlled and monitored Interstate. Joe mentally ran through all contingencies and kept the gun in his lap.   
  
"You can get up now, Lidia, but watch the glass." She carefully sat back up.  
  
"What happens now?" She said.   
  
"We keep running for cover. If anyone asks about the windows before I can get them replaced, we say they got smashed out by vandals. It's something that wouldn't be too unusual of a happening. The car itself is otherwise nothing special. I partly got it because it's the same make and model that three of the biggest rental places here use, so I know it can blend into the crowd. We just need to stop off at a mini storage place near Lake Toho. I want to change the license plates in case whoever was following us gets a match there, and I've got a set or two of them in a space I rent out there."  
  
"After that?"  
  
"I've got a place in the woods I bought back when everyone was talking about Year 2K problems. We'll head out there"  
  
*******************  
  
"We do not want to hurt you. We will not allow a mutant to go into space. Scrub the launch, and no one will be unharmed." Jean, Scott and the Professor held their ground as the rest of the crowd fled around them. Soon, the threesome found themselves standing alone between the helicopters and the very importants.  
  
""If you aren't going to hurt anyone, you don't start firing guns in their direction." Scott said, one hand reaching towards his glasses.   
  
"Six of them. We each get two." Jean said as she stretched an arm in front of her. The helicotpers were close enough to them now to generate a strong wind.   
  
"Not bad odds." As the first helicopter got close enough to drop its payload of commandos, the Professor mentally reached out to the pilot.Carefully so as not to leave permanent damage, he took over control of the other man's nervous system, telling it to make motions that would take the machine too high in the air for the commandos to get out of the bird. His mind then reached out to a second pilot, and the concentration required to control two minds at once left him only peripherally aware of the less subtle approach his students were taking to deal with the others.  
  
Scott ripped off his sunglasses and looked toward one of the remaining four helicopters. The energy beam from his bared eyes jumped through the sky and slammed into one of the aircraft's tails. After the first quick burst, he reapplied the sunglasses so he could see to target again. As he did, he felt, rather than saw Jean gathering up her strength next to him and then channeling telekinetic energy towards another of the aircraft.   
  
Her aim was just as accurate as Scott's had been. The helicopter she had grabbed with her mind slammed into the one Scott had damaged, sending both dropping into the lagoon below.   
  
"Two left to go." He said. Now noticing the sirens blaring in the distance indicating law enforcement had started their rush to the scene, Scott took aim at the next helicopter and forced his sunglasses over the bridge of his nose again. This time, he hit the helicopter's pilot, sending the aircraft into the water. "Good thing the cops cavalry's here. The ones who make it out of the water are going to be pretty pissed."   
  
"Hopefully, they're too busy trying not to drown or get eaten by the gators to make it to the beach in organized fashion." Jean said, delivering one last burst of telekinetic energy that cut the final helicopter in half.   
  
"This is Patrick Air Force Base military police. Drop your weapons and put your behind your head."   
  
"We will, but you've got to make sure they will too." Scott said, making sure his glasses were firmly secured on ears and nose before lacing his fingers together and putting his hands behind his head. Soldiers in camoflage with M-16s in hand streamed onto the scene, a few of them stopping to surround Jean, Scott and Xavier, while the others continued toward the men now paddling their way out of the swamp water. The first soggy soldiers reached land, and chose to surrender to the MPs instead of continuing the fight.   
  
"And since it's probably going to take a while to sort this out, could we please go inside where there's air conditioning. It's getting too hot out here." Jean said, willing to let the MPs take over the work of dealing with the clean-up of the whole mess, and hoping to move to a less humid place as soon as possible. 


	2. 2

*************************************Part 2  
  
Part of Duncan MacLeod wished Amanda had come with him. After all she was the expert at sneaking into and out of an amazing array of different places without the owners of said places ever knowing she had been there. But then if Amanda had come along, it could have easily been both of them sitting in the same cell in a not so abandoned monastery in rural Slovakia waiting to see just what their captors had planned. And he was too much of a gentleman to wish that on any woman.  
  
It had all seemed so simple back in Budapest. After a few false leads, he had finally managed to contact Olivia and Istvan even as they moved quickly through the area trying to track down the people who had tried to kidnap the girl Lidia. Then two leads had turned up almost simultaneously. Since they could bluff their way through Albanian and Duncan could not, they were off chasing someone named Georghe through the streets of Tirana, leaving him to make his way through the exburbs of Bratislava. Which for some reason, seemed to be overrun with a large cross section of European and American homo sapiens supremacists.   
  
And then the Friends of Humanity killed him while he had been trying to figure out just what role they played in Lidia's near kidnapping. Which would not have been so bad if he had not come back to life while they were trying to hide the body. So now he sat in the monk's cell, trying to figure his way out of the maze and wondering why the Friends kept referring to him as a substitute for someone called Logan.  
  
*******************  
  
Forty eight hours after the NASA attack, Joe stood in the back yard of Methos' safe house grilling up a dinner of brats and hamburgers. He always had known the Old Man was good at fading into the woodwork, and the choice in safehouses was no exception. The small cinder block house was one of many hunting cabins and trailers scattered along the fringes of Ocala National Forest. Few people lived in the area year round; it was expected that the hunting camps would only be used on weekends and for the odd weeklong hunting trip during game season.   
  
"Done yet, Joe?" Adam stuck his head out the kitchen door.   
  
"Just about. I'm more than ready to get back into the air conditioning." He gave the brats one more turn on the grill.  
  
"Good. I think we're all more than hungry. I talked to Scotty earlier on the disposable cell phone I picked up at the gas station. After everything settled down at the Cape, he got home safely."  
  
"Good to hear that." Joe liked the retired engineer. He declared the meat done, cleared it off the grill in favor of a clean plate, then took it back into the house.   
  
In short order, the three escapees sat down at the small kitchen table to dinner. At first, the house was quiet as people devoured their meal, but the conversation started up again as Adam cracked open his second beer.   
  
"I figure I'll check my answering machine after we're through. See if MacLeod has turned up anything. Of course, this being Duncan, he's probably too busy righting all the wrongs in the world to leave a message after the beep."  
  
"He can be rather good at keeping in touch, actually. The difference Tessa made with that is amazing, if you'd heard how he was about that before he met her."   
  
"Missed that volume, I guess." He looked at Lidia, who was listlessly picking through a bag of potato chips. "Doing alright there?"  
  
"I am tired of running, and tired of being scared, and just want to go home and be safe."   
  
"We're working on that. The people who are trying to figure out what went wrong for you, they've been doing what they do for a long time, and are very good at it. Things will work out." Joe said.  
  
"Yes, but there must be something to do other than running and thinking of being scared."  
  
"So you've got dish washing duty then." Adam said, starting to clear the table. "I'm off to the living room to check on the news reports on tv."  
  
*************************  
  
After a day of fast talking, string pulling, and the review of countless security camera tapes the Air Force had let Jean, Scott, and Xavier go home to Westchester. Looking back, their interrogation at the Cape had been the easy part. Now came the challenge of trying to track down the criminals who had disrupted the shuttle launch even though they didn't have a way of gathering evidence from the crime. Or at least a way of gathering evidence directly.  
  
"How's it going?" Jean asked.  
  
"Getting into the NASA video footage wasn't too bad. Tricky if you're just a garden variety hacker, but even if I wasn't on the team that wrote their security software, not too bad for me." Graham Davies, Xavier's School Class of 1992, leaned back in his chair in front of the computer console as he chewed a claw. "Good thing I only use my talents to help the good guys."  
  
"You always said that the good guys paid better." She teased her old friend, who had always been willing to drop every one of his paying gigs when Professor Xavier's team needed the services of their on-call hacker.  
  
"Or at least the good guys have way cooler toys. Not too many Cray supercomputers showing up on the black market like you've got here. And they're so much more fun to play with than what I've got back in Maine."  
  
"And since you've gotten into NASA?"  
  
"Running all kinds of neato image-matching on the aforementioned Cray toy. You know I never really thought much about clothing until I dated a girl who was a real clothes horse back in college. Label this, label that. It's still a pair of jeans, right? But turns out different will put a seam here or a pocket there, and if you can identify something as a Ralph Versace or a little known military boot manufacturing company, then you can find out who sold what to who and maybe turn something up. Worst case, they're wearing Levis, and there is no way of tracing ther because there are twenty million ways to get a pair of 501s. I'm shooting the moon here, but if you can get a match for a supplier, you just might be able to follow the supply chain down to the bad guys. Same thing with helicopters, or military watches or other things in the picture." Graham paused to scratch an itchy bit of mauve fur under his own watchband.  
  
"Anyways, that sort of match is a long shot, but if you've got the computing power, why not do it? Another thing to match is faces. Turned up five matches of faces between the cameras here, and the videos from the attack at FOH attack at the Hiroshima Carp baseball game a couple years back, and four matches from the Hungarian Parliament bombing last year. Some of them were the commandos, but a couple were just faces in the crowd, and that's too much of a coincidence."  
  
"So let's see them." Jean said. Graham hit a couple keys, and the images came up. The first couple were men dress shirts. The next one brought up a face that she had seen not too long ago, Adam Pierson's young friend. "Stop. I met her at the Cape. She was introduced to me as Lidia." In the Florida picture, she stood next to Scotty the engineer, dressed for the heat in a short skirt and sleeveless top. In the Hungary picture, she was more formally dressed in a suit and heels, sprinting down a corridor her id badge on a lanyard whipping behind her.  
  
"Good call on the id badge." Jean hadn't realized she had spoken out loud. "Looks like she had some sort of clearance to be there. And if there's clearance, there's a paper trail for that clearance. Give me fifteen minutes, maybe a half hour so I can see what I can find on her. Gotta give a call to a friend who actually speaks Hungarian, and I assume it's still dial 1713 for a secure outside line here?"   
  
"Yes. And I expect you want me to stop hovering now, don't you?"  
  
"You always did know me so better than Angie did. Guess that's why she's an ex-wife."  
  
Jean walked out of the computer lab. She did not know what to make of Lidia. In her brief contact with the girl, Jean had felt no outward hostility about mutants projecting from her, just a tiredness that was easily chalked up to a hundred different things that could be as simple as a hangover. But Lidia had been with Adam Pierson Towson, who had been heavily involved with the Friends of Humanity at one time, and who definitely had his own agenda for mutant-human relations. And Adam had definitely learned how to hide when he chose to. As soon as they had gotten back from Florida, they had tried to trace both Adam Towson, high school French teacher, and Adam Pierson, sometime paramilitary commando, and had found nothing other than carefully constructed lies. Cerebro could not find him. Even the address on the business card he had once left her was nothing more than a mail drop. She walked outside, taking a couple laps around the mansion and watching a bit of the pick-up basketball game the students always seemed to have going after class. Then her watch beeped, remending her to check up on Graham, who had a tendency to go off on tangents if left unsupervised too long. There needed to be focus if the X-Men were going to be able to stop the friends from attacking again.  
  
"So what do we have?" She asked Graham as she walked back in the door.  
  
"What we have is one Lidia Vadas. According to Attila," Graham said.  
  
"Attila?"  
  
"Yeah, my friend that translated for me. Naming your kid Attila in Hungary is kind of like naming your kid Michael here. According to Attila, your Lidia is a twenty two year old university student who was working in Parliment this summer. Mainstream political party, nothing controversial there, not like some of the nutbars you get in the European parliaments. At first, she seemed like any other bright eyed-college kid. Then there was the bomb plot. Go back on the cameras, and she leaves the building fifteen minutes before the bomb is supposed to off."  
  
"So she could have been one of the bombers."  
  
"Could have been, but it's a little bit fuzzy. The night after the defused bomb, the police logs show someone called in about a fight going on in the hallway of her apartment building. The fight was was over by the time the cops got there, so it got recorded as a generic noise complaint-no follow up. Three days later, one of Lidia's friends calls in a missing persons report on her."  
  
"Still, it doesn't rule it out she was working for the Friends all along, and left when it looked like the police might be on her trail."  
  
"Except for one thing. We got into her medical records, and she's got a standing prescription for Tanmorset from her doctor. Now granted Hungary has a better medical system than a lot of places, but Tanmorset one of the most expensive anti-migrane drugs on the market. I ran a check, and it's extremely rare for it to get improted or sold into the country. You of all people should know what else Tanmorset ges used for."  
  
"It's a pain reliever that actually works for telepaths. Everything else tends to disrupt a telepath's ability to shield out the thoughts of others." Jean had been one of the people unlucky enough to be part of that medical trial and error proces. "So she could be an innocent mutant caught up in it all. On the bright side, if she is a mutant, the Professor could find her with Cerebro." 


End file.
